Federation Management
1 Introduction
The OpenTrack federation management system has been developed working with European Athletics. We currently work with the national federations of Belarus, Cyprus, Estonia, Macedonia, Malta, Northern Ireland, Norway, Serbia and Wales, as well as with the British Masters Athletics Federation.
Federation officials can
- Approve license requests
- Set up championships
- Approve athlete or club licences
- Record medical exam certificates and dates
- Communicate with the clubs, officials, and athletes within their federation
Club representatives can
- Add new members to the system
- Add a coach
- Edit details about their club members
- Request annual licenses from the federation
- Make team entries to competitions
Athletes can
- Customise their athlete profiles
- View their progress in national rankings lists (this data is supported in partnership with Tilastopaja, European Athletics’ statistics provider)
In partnership with Tilastopaja, European Athletics’ statistics provider, we offer a complete solution for national rankings and athlete biographies, covering all age groups and all registered athletes.
2 Federation Management
2.1 System Roles
The system understands the hierarchy of control and data visibility issues so has various levels of access from federation officers through club officers and down to the athletes themselves.
2.2 Club Administration
Each club administrator can add new athletes as they come into the sport, see all their members and their current status. They can make or request changes to be made.
By default we make this information as public as possible (with the exception of personal information), enabling athletes and parents to spot and report mistakes quickly.
2.3 Licence Status
Licence statuses can be applied to athletes using the system.
To request a new license the club admin simply clicks on the athlete.
Every night, the federation will get an email alert with the athletes waiting. When licensing is complete the validity will be extended.
For countries using a national numbering scheme, this is where the Federation can issue a bib number to the athlete, which is then visible to everyone for the rest of the season.
“Licensing insertion and verification is almost gone (before it took 1-2 months).
Bibs distribution and preparations for completion is much quicker (before it took 3-4 days, now 3-4 hours).”
Sirje Lippe, General Secretary, Estonian Federation
2.4 Entering Competitions
A major purpose of the system is to manage entries to competitions.
You can see upcoming competitions which are open for entries on the front page of your web site.
The team manager selects athletes for each event by simply selecting the event and then clicking on the athletes name from a drop down list. Predictive text speeds the process up for large clubs. The system ensures that only those with the correct gender and age enter each event.
“We planned to run the new entry system in parallel with spreadsheets for a new competition, but after one hour the clubs said they were not going back…”
Kristel Berendsen, Competition Manager, Estonian Federation
2.5 Multiple Languages
We understand that English is not the first language of Europe and have successfully translated our system into the following languages (and alphabets): Estonian, Belarusian, Greek, French and Serbian.
“One of our objectives was to have our results available in Greek.
OpenTrack’s user-friendly system has allowed us to do this.”
Katia Evangelou, Administrator, Cyprus
3 Managing Competitions
Countries adopting the Federation Management System get full access to our Results Capture and Competition Management System for their national-level events.
Entries flow in seamlessly, everyone knows where to find the results, and data (with properly identified athletes) flows directly to our statistical partners to keep rankings up to date.
More details on our competition management system can be found here.
4 Open Data
With OpenTrack, you always have full access to all of your data. You will never feel like a prisoner or be asked to pay to access it.
We aim to make as much information public as possible, so that athletes, coaches and parents can quickly spot mistakes, and report or correct them; and so that volunteers can do exciting things with the data.
We recognize that you need to integrate with other systems, import and export freely. So we make it as easy as possible to retrieve data in formats like JSON, Excel and PDF. Competition Organisers have full access to data on their competitors, and Federation staff can access everything in their country.
For developers we already have JSON URLs, APIs and Push Notifications - all the tools you need to integrate with us. Just get in touch!
You can read more about our Open Data Policy here.
5 Testimonials and Feedback
“Our federation is more visible - the number of website visitors has increased.
The work for all involved parties has been simplified – federation people, club managers, coaches, athletes, statisticians.”
Sirje Lippe, General Secretary, Estonian Federation
“You shouldn’t just be recommending OpenTrack, you should be mandating it!”
Milan Pedalo, General Secretary, BIH Athletics Federation
6 Next Steps
Want to get involved?
Please contact info@opentrack.run for more information and we will be happy to demo the system’s capabilities over a meeting
This is a joint initiative funded by European Athletics to help with the growth of the sport. You can contact European Athletics about federation management via technical@european-athletics.org